Friday, October 20, 2006
A tip for industry analysts who want to sell services to large enterprises...
Over the last couple of weeks I have gotten pitches from industry analysts who want us to buy their services. Figured I would share some of my thoughts...
While the value proposition of deeper research is intriguing, the thing that would cause me to get off my butt and actually think about truly considering your offering is something that you haven't been paying much attention to. Many have commented on the fact that they read my blog but yet none of them actually understand nor take action on any of the things I have asked of this community.
Do you think that I really want to spend say $40K for even more reading material (aka research) and to engage in conversations? I have more than enough to read and suffer like most folks from information overload. Of course the canned response from analysts is that they distill information so that I don't have to but of course this misses the point.
If I were to truly think about what I need from an analyst firm it is not access to research but for them to be a customer advocate in a way that I can observe. For example, if I could buy a contract from an analyst firm that stated they would have the responsibility of not only talking to all of my software vendors about building in support for XACML into their products so that I don't have to then I would gladly pay $40K
Another thing that you can do to stay on my radar is to do case studies on things that are of interest to us. So far, most of the case studies tend to be things that the analyst themselves are interested in. Sometimes these two things align, sometimes they don't. If you want to sell to us, then they better align.
You can make a great impression on us by offering to do a case study to be shared with others in printed form (sorry, blogging it doesn't cut it). If you know anything about large enterprises, we all have big fat egos that need stroking and case studies is one of many ways to accomplish this goal...
| | View blog reactionsWhile the value proposition of deeper research is intriguing, the thing that would cause me to get off my butt and actually think about truly considering your offering is something that you haven't been paying much attention to. Many have commented on the fact that they read my blog but yet none of them actually understand nor take action on any of the things I have asked of this community.
Do you think that I really want to spend say $40K for even more reading material (aka research) and to engage in conversations? I have more than enough to read and suffer like most folks from information overload. Of course the canned response from analysts is that they distill information so that I don't have to but of course this misses the point.
If I were to truly think about what I need from an analyst firm it is not access to research but for them to be a customer advocate in a way that I can observe. For example, if I could buy a contract from an analyst firm that stated they would have the responsibility of not only talking to all of my software vendors about building in support for XACML into their products so that I don't have to then I would gladly pay $40K
Another thing that you can do to stay on my radar is to do case studies on things that are of interest to us. So far, most of the case studies tend to be things that the analyst themselves are interested in. Sometimes these two things align, sometimes they don't. If you want to sell to us, then they better align.
You can make a great impression on us by offering to do a case study to be shared with others in printed form (sorry, blogging it doesn't cut it). If you know anything about large enterprises, we all have big fat egos that need stroking and case studies is one of many ways to accomplish this goal...
